Film captures inspiration and grief

Updated 1:22 am, Friday, August 1, 2014

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Brenda and John Fareri took the nightmare of the loss of a child and turned it into a dream of hope for thousands of children.

In the fall of 1995, the town of Greenwich was shocked to learn that a 13-year-old girl, an eighth-grader at Central Middle School, had contracted rabies from a bat in or near her backcountry home. Residents watched helplessly from afar as news unfolded about Maria Fareri's condition.

But for the Fareris, the ordeal was much more than a story in the newspaper.

"It was torture," said Brenda Fareri. "Maria was in a lot of pain, went into critical care and was put on life support so she wouldn't feel the pain."

Maria fell ill on Sept. 19, 1995, and died just more than two weeks later, on Oct. 3.

Her parents, in the depths of their sadness, decided they would not only mourn Maria, they would honor her. The Fareris went on to build the Maria Fareri Children's Hospital at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y. The facility has become a benchmark for children's hospitals and changed the model for care to family-center care, which addresses the entire family along with the ill child.